An Intellectual History of Liberal Catholicism in Western Europe, 1789-1870


Book Description

This volume probes and deciphers the tensions and contradictions that underlie modern European Liberal Catholicism. Beginning with the French revolution and looking at dialogues between European 'public moralists', the book discusses the ways in which liberal Catholics loosened their bonds with religion, all the while relying on it. It reflects on how and why they promoted a post-revolutionary state and society based on religious dogma and morality, and what new liberal order and socio-political and religious models they proposed. Beyond the analysis of the work of these Catholic intellectuals, the question of their conceiving a specific liberal approach through Catholicism is also investigated. More generally, it prompts a vital reappraisal of the political, ideological and philosophical pressures that the religious question caused in the redefinition of Western European post-revolutionary liberalism.




Christopher Dawson


Book Description

The English historian Christopher Dawson (1889-1970) was the first Catholic Studies professor at Harvard University and has been described as one of the foremost Catholic thinkers of modern times. His focus on culture prefigured its importance in Catholicism since Vatican Council II and in the rise of mainstream cultural history in the late twentieth century. How did Dawson think about culture and why does it matter? Joseph T. Stuart argues that through Dawson’s study of world cultures, he acquired a “cultural mind” by which he attempted to integrate knowledge according to four implicit rules: intellectual architecture, boundary thinking, intellectual asceticism, and intellectual bridges. Dawson’s multilayered approach to culture, instantiating John Henry Newman’s philosophical habit of mind, is key to his work and its relevance. By it, he responded to the cultural fragmentation he sensed after the Great War (1914-1918). Stuart supports these claims by demonstrating how Dawson formed his cultural mind practicing an interdisciplinary science of culture involving anthropology, sociology, history, and comparative religion. Stuart shows how Dawson applied his cultural thinking to problems in politics and education. This book establishes how Dawson’s simple definition of culture as a “common way of life” reconciles intellectualist and behavioral approaches to culture. In addition, Dawson’s cultural mind provides a synthesis helpful for recognizing the importance of Christian culture in education. It demonstrates principles which construct a more meaningful cultural history. Anyone interested in the idea of culture, the connection of religion to the social sciences, Catholic Studies, or Dawson studies will find this book an engaging and insightful intellectual history.




Literature and Catholicism in the 19th and 20th Centuries


Book Description

This volume investigates how literary texts have reflected, in ground-breaking ways, distinctive features of a Catholic philosophy of life. It demonstrates how literature, by its ability to capture the imagination, is able to evoke facets of human experience related specifically to a Catholic understanding of life.




In the Picture


Book Description

Evelyn Waugh at war is an irresistibly fascinating subject, as are his war novels and diaries. Drawn to units offering the greatest danger, but often frustrated in his search for action, Waugh served in multiple regiments, saw battle on Crete and worked behind the lines in occupied Croatia. In the Picture traces Waugh’s experiences, both vivid and mundane, with a completeness never before attempted and shows how they come alive in Sword of Honour. It also illuminates the brief hints within the narrative of key events of the war, while highlighting its strategic direction. Waugh’s individualistic relationships with superiors, subordinates and public opinion led to blame and controversy. Working mainly from archival sources, In the Picture examines Waugh’s fitness to be an officer, his conduct on Crete, his being sacked from the Special Service Brigade, and his service in Croatia. New, very surprising discoveries dispel entrenched myths.




The Letters of T. S. Eliot


Book Description

The sixth volume of the personal correspondences of British literary giant T. S. Eliot The letters of T. S. Eliot collected in this sixth volume were written during the years the Nobel Prize–winning poet, playwright, critic, and essayist called, “the happiest I can ever remember in my life.” Penned in large part during his tour of Depression Era America, these letters reflect Eliot’s resolve to end his torturous eighteen-year marriage to his wife, Vivienne, and offer fascinating descriptions of the author’s encounters with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, Marianne Moore, and other notable figures.




Protestant-Catholic Conflict from the Reformation to the 21st Century


Book Description

Taking a fresh look at the roots and implications of the enduring major historic fissure in Western Christianity, this book presents new insights into the historical dynamics of Protestant-Catholic conflict while illuminating present-day contexts and suggesting comparisons for approaching other entrenched conflicts in which religion is implicated.




Ramiro De Maeztu and England


Book Description

A major contribution to our understanding of intellectual exchanges between Britain and Spain in the early twentieth century




British Catholics and Fascism


Book Description

Drawing substantially on the thoughts and words of Catholic writers and cultural commentators, Villis sheds new light on religious identity and political extremism in early twentieth-century Britain. The book constitutes a comprehensive study of the way in which British Catholic communities reacted to fascism both at home and abroad.




The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V


Book Description

The fifth volume of The Oxford History of British & Irish Catholicism—covering the period from the Great War, through the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council—surveys the transformed ecclesial landscape between the papacies of Benedict XV and Pope Francis. It explores the efforts of bishops, priests and people in Ireland and Scotland, Wales and England to respond to modern challenges and reintegrate the experiences and expertise of the laity into the ministry of the Church. Alongside the twentieth century's designation as an era of technological innovation, war, peace, globalization, decolonization and liberation, this period has also been designated 'the People's Century'. Viewed through the lens of the Catholic church in Britain and Ireland, these same dynamics are explored within thematic, synoptic chapters by leading scholars. As a century characterized by the rise, or better renewal of the apostolate of the laity, this edited collection traces the struggles to reconcile tradition, re-evaluate hierarchical authority, adapt to social and educational mobility, as well as to adjudicate serious challenges from outside and within—including inflammatory biopolitics and clerical sexual abuse—to religious belief and the legitimacy of the Church as an institution.




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